The Burning Skies

by David J. Williams

  “What the hell are we guilty of?” says Sarmax.

  “Being American,” says the officer.

  “Sir,” says Spencer, “that’s not true.”

  “It’s total rubbish,” says Sarmax.

  “You’re the rubbish,” says the sergeant.

  “And you can take it up with them,” says the officer, gesturing at the rail. Something else is emerging from the darkness, moving along the train’s cars, catching up with the flatcar, matching speeds. It’s a single gun car, running sleek and low to the rail, not much higher than the flatcar. Another bridge extends.

  “Get them in there,” says the officer.

  Soldiers start hustling Spencer and Sarmax onto the bridge. The anxious look on the soldiers’ faces isn’t due to the narrowness of the bridge they’re on. It’s the dreaded military intelligence insignia upon the gun car. The soldiers shove Spencer and Sarmax inside and hastily retrace their steps.

  The door closes behind Spencer and Sarmax. They’re standing in a railcar, a cockpit at each end, and a turret hatch in the ceiling. A driver’s sitting in the cockpit that faces forward. He doesn’t look round, just hits the throttle. Spencer grabs onto the wall to steady himself, looks at the driver’s back.

  “Uh … hello?”

  Legs emerge from the turret. A man drops down to face them. He wears a Russian captain’s uniform and a scruffy beard. He looks at them.

  “Your codes,” he says.

  Spencer transmits codes. The man salutes.

  “Sir,” he says. “What now?”

  “Now we root out the state’s enemies,” says Spencer.

  “Any news from HK?”

  “Those scientists are a poison pill. We’ve got a traitor on the loose.”

  “As we feared.”

  “Worse than that. The West’s involved. They’re trying to take advantage of the scientist roundups to infiltrate some of their agents. And someone in this place is turning a blind eye. We’ve got to proceed with utmost caution.”

  “We’ll have to,” says the captain. “This place is moving onto full war footing. It’s like we’re expecting an attack at any moment.”

  “Or else we’re going to launch one,” says Spencer. “Something the traitors might be counting on. I need your data, and I need it quickly.”

  “Take the rear cockpit,” says the captain. “Access whatever you need from there.”

  Spencer turns. The captain goes up to confer with the driver. Sarmax joins Spencer in the rear cockpit, activates the one-on-one.

  “What kind of a fucking plan is this?” he demands.

  “I figured we might not have enough leverage on escort duty,” replies Spencer. “So I’ve been running some scenarios to get us a better view.”

  “By working with this guy?”

  “The captain’s just an errand boy, Leo. Albeit a discreet one. He thinks our infiltration of the escort was part of our cover. That our arrest will make any traitors rest easy.”

  “But there aren’t any traitors.”

  “If there are, more power to ’em. Now how about we start the investigation?” Spencer leans forward, starts punching commands into the terminal.

  “How about you keep me in the loop going forward?”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “I outrank you, Lyle.”

  “Look,” says Spencer. “I had to be sure they weren’t hacking our one-on-one link. Anything we said there had to be chalked up to part of the cover.”

  “You are playing one dangerous game.”

  “I’m just getting started,” says Spencer, who jacks into the dashboard, starts running code from a whole new vantage point. He doesn’t doubt that Sarmax is on board with the logic—that he gets that the best way to infiltrate an impregnable fortress is to make like you’re here to stop the infiltration. Because the East is just like the West: purging its own, divided against itself, compartmentalized to the point where the right hand has no idea where the hell the left one was last night. Infiltration works on the same principles. Which is why Spencer’s been less than forthcoming with Sarmax.

  Though that sort of thing can cut both ways.

  “I guess it’s time I gave you this,” says Sarmax. He’s pulled something from his mouth. Something that looks like—

  “Your tooth?”

  “Just take it,” says Sarmax.

  “What am I, the fucking tooth fairy?”

  “Not unless you’re into cross-dressing. This contains a chip. Which contains—”

  But Spencer’s already grabbing the tooth from him—loading it into his own data-socket, scanning the information revealed.

  “This is some kind of hack,” he says.

  “Yeah. I need you to upload it.”

  “I need to know more about it—”

  “Upload it and you will.”

  “I’m getting really sick of these surprises, Leo.”

  “This is the last of them.”

  “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “Where do you think? The Throne.”

  “He could have handed me this to begin with.”

  “He trusts me more than you.”

  “Fuck’s sake—”

  “Don’t take it personally Spencer. If we’d been busted in the opening rounds, you might have tried to bargain with the East. Might have tried to sell this for your hide.”

  “And now?”

  “You no longer have that option.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Run the program and you will.”

  I’m still dreaming, aren’t I?” she asks. “Not exactly.”

  “But I’m still trapped inside my head.”

  “More like a zone-construct I’m creating with your help.”

  “My help?”

  “However involuntary.”

  “You’re in here with me,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re both still on this ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Throne is on board too.”

  “Of course,” says Carson.

  “He wants me close at hand.”

  “He needs you for what’s about to happen.”

  “He’s going to start a war,” she says.

  “He’s going to finish one. One that’s been going on for decades. One that’s torn our planet at the seams.”

  “I thought he believed in peace!”

  “There’ll be peace, sure. When the East lies in wreckage at our feet.”

  “And détente?”

  “Failed at the Europa Platform. As I said.”

  “But you also said the Throne was still hoping to avert war.”

  He shrugs. She snarls.

  “Goddamn it, Carson, why the hell didn’t you tell me earlier? Why this charade?”

  “Because I’d never have gotten so far inside you otherwise.”

  She cradles her head in her hands. Says nothing.

  “Your conscious resistance accounts for only so much,” he continues. “It’s your unconscious resistance that’s the bulk of the challenge. Had you known that we intended to harness you as the primary node in a first strike against the Coalition, you would never have let me get to the center of your mind.”

  “But now you’re here.”

  “And now the time for hiding’s over.”

  “Someone should tell the Throne that.”

  “We’ve crossed behind the far side of the Moon,” says Carson. “In mere minutes we—”

  “Land outside Congreve,” she says. “Go to ground in the Throne’s bunker beneath the city suburbs.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “It’s not that hard. Tell the Throne to come in here and face me.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” says Carson. “You’re the one who’s going to face him. Once the last of your resistance has dropped away. Once you wonder why you ever wanted to call him anything besides sir.”

  “You can’t make me do anything.”

>   “Can’t I?”

  On the wall beside Carson appear two vid screens: two sets of grids. One depicts a cross-section of the Himalayas and the labyrinth beneath them, the other the L2 fleet. Each grid shows coordinates of something moving through it.

  “The missions,” breathes Haskell.

  “Now approaching their last phases. And ready for a little nudge from you.”

  “Right now?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  And suddenly she can. Even though she can’t do anything about it. Dashboards light up within her mind and it’s like someone else is hitting her controls. She looks at Carson.

  “So you really did give it to me backward,” she says.

  “That’s always the best way.”

  “You don’t want to do a surgical strike on the Eurasians to stop them from starting something. You want to do it so you can.”

  “And we will.”

  “And Szilard? He’s not really trying to unleash war?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Sure it does.”

  “It doesn’t. What matters is that when the shit hits the fan the president can’t have someone running the L2 fleet he can’t depend on. If Szilard didn’t personally organize the SpaceCom conspiracy to hit the Throne, then he gave it the green light. And if he didn’t even do that, then he should be executed for incompetence. For allowing treason to sprout under his nose. He’s dead regardless.”

  “And so am I.”

  “Not at all. You’ll be the Throne’s prime razor.”

  “But I won’t remember anything before that.”

  “You’ll remember everything you need to.”

  “That’s all I’ve ever been allowed to do!”

  “But don’t you want to know the reason why?”

  “What?”

  He says nothing. Just gestures. A door’s appeared between the two wall-screens. Haskell stares at it. It seems familiar. She wonders where she’s seen it before.

  And then she remembers.

  “No,” she says.

  Grey, metallic. It’s just a door. But she can feel the presence of what lurks behind it. Something she hasn’t felt for so long. Something that reminds her how much mercy there is in being able to forget.

  “Don’t do this,” she says.

  “I already have,” Carson replies.

  The door starts to open. Light pours in from the void beyond.

  The view from the shuttle window shows machines of every description. Their shadows practically blot out the stars. Their lights are like some mini-galaxy The shuttle’s heading toward where the lights clump thickest.

  “Ever read Dante?” says Lynx.

  He and Linehan are sitting behind a pilot who’s maneuvering their shuttle toward a medium-grade war-sat that’s part of L2’s inner defenses. It’s swelling steadily within the window.

  “What?” asks Linehan.

  “The Inferno. Ever read it?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only way you can understand what we’re heading into.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The circles of hell, man. We’ve run the outer ones. Now we’ve got to beat the ones that really count.”

  “And let me guess: Szilard’s the devil.”

  “Except he’s not. He’s just a man. Which is why we’re going to nail him.”

  “But we’re men too.”

  Lynx just laughs. Because he knows that’s no longer true. Because the download that’s suddenly reaching him has made him far more than what he was a few seconds back. The Manilishi’s codes surge through his brain, right on time, right as Carson assured him they would. Close at hand, too—coming from the ship now closing in on the farside. Lynx’s mind writhes in the rush of power he’s never known. He feels himself building up to heights he’s never dreamed of. He’s got all the leverage he needs and then some.

  So he makes his move, seamlessly reaching out into the mainframes of the shuttle’s destination, rigging them so they don’t even know they’ve been rigged. He steals right under the eyes of all the watching razors. He’s got them so beat it’s as if their eyes were his own. He’s almost frightened by how much better he’s suddenly gotten—suddenly realizes that all his razor prowess has been mere show beside the real master of the game. All those moments searching through the corridors of the Moon for keys and clues and fragments of some greater knowledge that’s finally rushing through him—he struggles to control the rush that sends his heart beating faster than it ever has before. He takes a deep breath.

  “You okay in there?” says Linehan.

  “Can you feel it?” mutters Lynx.

  “Feel what?”

  “Crosshairs.”

  “What?”

  “All those … crosshairs. Tens of thousands of them. The Eurasian lunar batteries. Their guns at L4.”

  “Aimed at us?”

  “And everything else that’s up here, Linehan.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The average DE cannon’s not firing, you think it’s just sitting there and you’d be wrong because it’s cycling through a thousand different targets a second, making itself unpredictable, right?” Lynx is talking so fast he’s pretty much babbling. “Keeping those who might try to hack it out of the mix. There’s no one war plan, man. There’s infinite plans. Infinite scenarios. In the time since you last spoke, hundreds of guns have flicked their sights on and off this fucking shuttle. The only weapons tracking us without interruption belong to our own side.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Because you’re not listening. There’s a difference between war scenarios and in-fleet security, right? This crate we’re in is getting close to the SpaceCom flagship. It’s thus a threat of the first magnitude. Along with all the other craft that are doing the same thing at any given moment. Normal transport, right? But nothing’s normal up here. So they designate certain guns to do nothing but track stuff like us so that the lion’s share of the gunnery can worry about the East. Right?”

  “Sure,” says Linehan. “Whatever you say.”

  “That’s what I thought. Two particle-beam cannons, one microwave gatling, three high-energy lasers: they’ve got our number. At point-blank range.”

  “Are you going somewhere with this?”

  “Are you a fucking moron? They’re the back door to reach the ID configurations with which we’re getting inside L2’s inner perimeter. Got it? The guns that are tracking us can be hacked, and then it’s just dribble and shoot to figure out what their computers think we are, and then we get in there and change their mind so we can get clearance to get to the Montana itself—Jesus, will you look at that.”

  The war-sat’s swelling through three-quarters of the window. Turrets jut out in every direction. The shuttle drops toward huge doors that are opening to receive it—floats into the landing bay, touches down. The pilot springs the hatch.

  “Have a good ’un,” he says.

  “Sure thing,” replies Linehan. He and Lynx get up, pull themselves out of the shuttle and into the landing bay—only to find themselves surrounded by SpaceCom marines who aren’t intimidated in the slightest by the officer insignia on the suits of the men they’ve got their weapons trained on.

  “Sir,” says the squad’s sergeant, “we need to run a few checks.”

  “We’re running late,” says Lynx.

  “Orders, sir,” says the sergeant. “This way.” The marines escort Linehan and Lynx to an airlock. The sergeant and two marines step within, motion the two they’re escorting to join them. Doors close. Atmosphere pressurizes.

  “Remove your helmets,” says the sergeant. Lynx and Linehan comply. “We need DNA swabs,” he adds.

  “Since when?” asks Lynx.

  “Since new regulations got handed down twelve hours back. Sir.” The last word seems like an afterthought.r />
  But the DNA scan clearly isn’t. The marines take it from the inside of each man’s mouth. They also do a retina scan. Not to mention—

  “Sir,” says the sergeant, “we need a voiceprint.”

  “Don’t you already have that?” says Linehan.

  “He means keyed to a lie detector as well,” says Lynx on the one-on-one. “Plus a covert brain scan.”

  “Great.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sir,” says the sergeant, “what’s your name?”

  “Stefan Moseley” says Lynx.

  “Position?”

  “Major. Intelligence.”

  “And your business on the Montana?”

  “A meeting with my boss.”

  “Who is?”

  “Rear Admiral Jansen.”

  The questions continue, but there’s nothing that Lynx hasn’t expected. It’s all getting relayed to the Montana, into databases that Lynx has already hacked, and from there back to the war-sat. It’s the same with Linehan’s questions. He’s less polite than Lynx is, but just as responsive. Two more minutes, and the sergeant salutes.

  “Where’s the shuttle?” says Lynx.

  “We’ll take you there,” replies the sergeant.

  They leave the airlock room behind, proceed through the corridors of the war-sat. The atmosphere definitely seems pretty tense. Everyone looks like they’re going somewhere quick. Everyone’s averting their eyes.

  “Feeding me those answers in real time,” says Linehan. “Jesus Christ, you were cutting it close.”

  “How about you cutting me some fucking slack? I only just figured them out myself.”

  They reseal their helmets, pass through another airlock, reach another docking bay. This one’s even larger. The marines hustle Lynx and Linehan into a shuttle—which starts its motors, floats from the bay and out into the heart of the L2 fleet. One shape in particular looms ever closer.

  “That’s the Montana all right,” says Linehan.

  “And I can’t fucking wait.”

  “So what the fuck’s up here? How the hell did you snag a meeting with the acting head of SpaceCom intelligence?”

  “By being Com intelligence ourselves. Obviously.”

  “Yeah? When did you switch our IDs?”